TrueGentleman

Report that as a bug? You should have earned a badge for that!

Dibs on the name Goldfishfinger!

How about Batman and Robin thwarting the nefarious villain Sweettooth's scheme to turn Gotham City's water supply into chocolate syrup? Filmation's New Adventures of Batman was not exactly one of the high points in the Caped Crusader's television career.

Behold the terrifying face of cavity-causing villainy!

And we're sincerely grateful to you and the community team for informing Paragon management about our frustrations over the current failure to issue Paragon Points and Reward Tokens. Ideally, the best thing would be for Paragon to fix this problem immediately, although unfortunately this may not be possible in the real world. If that's the case, Paragon management ought to either address their customers directly about the ongoing breakdown in delivery of paid-for virtual goods or at least make some gesture to provide compensation or preserve good will.

There's so much great content that's come with CoH Freedom - new powersets, new story arcs, a new zone, new trials, etc., etc. - that it would be a shame for the experience to be soured over customer service problems.

Thank you again for all your work on behalf of the community.

That would be nice for a John Woo-themed Dual Pistol character. I'm already thinking of character themes that could incorporate bats and crows.

This looks like another great Halloween event - I enjoy that holiday's missions and invasions most of all.

For RMTers, it's not a question of efficiency so much as of the barrier of entry. If only one poor sucker per hour mutually befriends an RMTer after receiving a blind /friend request, that may well be enough to justify profitability (given the cheap economics of RMT sweatshops). The only question is how many messages need to be sent out per hour to reach said sucker. If a F2P account has no limit for how many /friend requests it can spam per hour, then the loophole might indeed pay off.

Ah, we're in agreement then (referrent confusion over "raging over it is").

The point is, of course, one of customer service. The money has been charged to our credit cards/debitted from our accounts/redeemed from timecards, so Paragon Studios/NC Soft is obliged to deliver the virtual goods promptly. They've acknowledged the error lies with them and apologized, but until the billing database is fixed, well, it's broken.

Why would it be a surprise that F2Pers, having been cut off from regular communication, would try a workaround?

Just wait until the RMTers discover the blind /friend loophole, if they haven't already.

Even if everyone's VIP points were received yesterday, as they should have, they're still being given out late. That's something we're entirely justified in complaining about, particularly since this is an ongoing, long-term problem. Let's recap.

First Beastyle informed that we'd get our VIP points on our account billing dates:
Then, after several days of confusion, Zwillinger had to let us know there was a problem with the billing database, resulting in late delivery for anyone whose billing date occurred before the 11th. He promised we'd get our delayed points on the 11th, however.
When nobody got their points on the 11th, Zwillinger had to explain:
As I said, it would be unfair to say Paragon hasn't kept us informed about the problems, but to say we can't complain about them flies in the face of the facts.

Incidentally, since people are reporting receiving their VIP points early now, it's a safe to wager that there are still problems with the billing database. We shall see when people receive their points next month. It's a safe bet that many people still won't on their billing date.

Thanks - it's a help to know how NC Soft has their billing structured and a relief to hear that this script will not have to be re-applied. Here's hoping that the VIP points distribution and player billing date will sync as soon as possible.

Many thanks for the update. It's good to know we'll all eventually be getting our VIP Paragon Points for this month. Have you been able to find out why the entire billing publish was originally delayed from yesterday? Also, what steps have been taken to ensure that next month's script will run properly?

Thanks again.

Not quite.

We can't justifiably complain that we haven't been informed about this compounded problem. Zwillinger has done his best to keep the community informed every time a new wrinkle appears with this issue.

We may unreservedly complain that our VIP Paragon Points are being delivered later and later than first promised, even if we receive them "today".

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by computer error," to paraphrase the old adage.

That said, since I still don't have my VIP Paragon Points yet, I can't really begin to determine my budget for purchases of more points for the market, to say nothing of decreased confidence in Paragon Studios' customer service. The consequence of this problem is that I'm buying fewer points later instead of more points now.

Thank you for the information. This opens up the question of why the entire billing publish was delayed. And the next question is what steps have been taken to ensure that next month's script runs properly and, beyond that, the scripts that have been promised to fix the whole billing cycle-VIP Paragon Points problem.

This is an ongoing, long-term customer service issue, and we're not cool with it.

At this time, my VIP Paragon Points have not yet been properly credited to my account.

Thanks again for keeping us informed about this situation, as well as for letting Paragon Studios know about the situation from their customers' standpoint.

Many thanks for this update. Why wasn't this script run properly?

Thanks again for keeping the community informed about these problems. We look forward to receiving more news.

This is one of those costume pieces that would have never occurred to me but, now that the art department's come up with it, it has me thinking about its possibilities. And it's reasonably priced, too. Nice work all around.

That's the problem with trying to shut the barn door after the chocobo has bolted. To herd F2Pers into the proper discussion zones, GMs would have to run a regular series of public reprimands whenever the help channel went off topic. The time to have implemented this dual F2P channel system would have been in the beta, but there was little interest in such things or attention to the more pessimistic predictions. Of course, doing nothing at this stage guarantees the help channel's decline.

Paraphrased for the 'net as: "Bad posting drives out the good." Sometimes, though, the reverse is true. While a new unmoderated F2P channel would probably swiftly devolve into Barrens Chat, a usefully functioning /help channel would be enough of a resource to maintain its integrity if dedicated players contributed. The Fr00bs would flock to the former, while the more serious players would be able to make better use of the latter.

Hence the need for self-policing tools in addition to active GM moderation. Unfortunately, the longer the devs ignore the issue, the better established the trollery will become.